What is de rigueur among straight celebrities seems to be especially so among gays striving to increase their time in the limelight and the favor they enjoy in the mainstream media. They feel they just have to establish their anti-Republican bona fides to show just how broad-minded they are.

Interviewed in Newsweek, sex columnist Dan Savage does just that by using profanity to talk about a conservative he reviles, using a crude term to describe gays and making assumptions about a Supreme Court justice with whose opinions he disagrees:

Scalia isn’t gay?!? I always think the biggest homophobe in the room is clearly a c–ksucker!

Amazing the juvenile level of this guy’s discourse. And the media has styled him as a kind of role model for gay adolescents struggling with their sexuality!

Fascinating that the folks who label opponents of their agenda as haters often do so in the most hateful terms.

I’ve long observed that there is a disconnect between how gay marriage advocates talk about the institution they promote and how my gay friends (particularly lesbians) live said relationships.

The advocates talk about marriage as a “right” to which we are entitled. It’s all about love and equality, they say. They tend to eschew terms like monogamy and responsibility and seem clueless about the history of the institution.

Meanwhile, many gay couples who have sought state recognition of their marriages (in states which grant them that privilege) talk about their relationships in terms nearly identical to their straight peers who elect such state recognition. They’re aware of about the challenges of relationships, the importance of monogamy as well as the balancing necessary for two individuals (even loving individuals) to live together in harmony.

In short, there seems to be a disconnect between gay marriage as practiced and as promoted, between those in relationships and those who deem themselves spokesman for our “community.” In his latest column which I found via Instapundit, Jonah Goldberg sort of gets at that disconnect, finding that “the gay left” who once “wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy” has now come to embrace marriage.

Perhaps their problem difficulty in talking about the meaning of marriage comes from their roots in a cultural movement at odds with the values undergirding that institution.

But imagine you hate the institution of marriage and then watch “Modern Family’s” hardworking bourgeois gay couple through those eyes. What’s being subverted? Traditional marriage, or some bohemian identity politics fantasy of homosexuality?

By the way, according to a recent study, “Modern Family” is the No. 1 sitcom among Republicans (and the third show overall behind Glenn Beck and “The Amazing Race”) but not even in the top 15 among Democrats, who prefer darker shows like Showtime‘s “Dexter,” about a serial killer trying to balance work and family between murders.

Michael Barone has a great piece in the Washington Examiner where he takes note of a phenomenon most welcome to Reagan Republicans like myself, the emergence of a “truce in [the] culture wars” as voters become increasingly concerned about the sour economy and the bloated federal government:

The fact is that there is an ongoing truce on the social issues, because for most Americans they have been overshadowed by concerns raised by the weak economy and the Obama Democrats’ vast increase in the size and scope of government.

And with this truce, comes increasing acceptance of gay people.

There’s a sharp difference between old and young voters on same-sex marriage, and my guess is that young voters will continue to favor it by wide margins as they grow older; but maybe not. In the meantime, discrimination against or disparagement of gays and lesbians is increasingly frowned on by larger and larger majorities.

Indeed, many conservatives frown against such disparagement, with some opponents of state-recognized same-sex marriage treating gay individuals with dignity and favoring civil unions.

Talk to a British émigré friend of mine whose octogenarian parents still live in the UK and have to deal with their National Health Service (NHS) and he loses his temper. Talk to my septuagenarian parents who have each had health difficulties over the past year and you hear of the challenges of aging and the choices available to them.

When each has had to consult a physician for care, they have often asked friends and family members (in the medical profession) if the course of action that health care profession recommended was the best option — and to learn what else (if anything) they could do. In some cases, they, like many Americans, have sought a second opinion.

As government extends the reach of its tentacles into our health care system, many fear that it will limit the number of choices available to patients. Taking issue with the use of the term “death panel” to describe the new Medicare regulations I blogged about here, calling such criticism “misplaced“, the editors of the Washington Examiner find the term

. . . entirely justified when used in reference to another provision of Obamacare — the Independent Payment Advisory Board — whose members will attempt to save money by making one-size-fits-all recommendations for skimping on care protocols and treatment regimes, particularly for older patients.

Unelected bureaucrats will soon be set the standards for the treatment doctors can offer, unelected bureaucrats who won’t be able to judge on a case-by-case basis, thus unable to define treatments which address the particular circumstances of individual patients. (more…)